Thanks for the info kdrag0n! Big fan of OrbStack; good call out on dynamic memory.

If the guest image has /sbin/init, we use that.

We'd recommend using a base image for the guest that includes systemd. ie: https://github.com/apple/container/blob/main/docs/container-...

Just to give a thumbs up to you and OrbStack. I've been using it every day since the first releases, and it is one of the most stable and performant drop-in replacements that I've seen.

Super happy orbstack customer. Just curious on your statement:

> I gave Container Machines a try and it seems to be much closer to OCI containers with a default bind mount than OrbStack machines. It has fewer integrations and doesn't run systemd or any other normal init system, so it's hard to run services.

The linked md document says:

> Real Linux services for testing. Run a database or whatever your stack needs as a system service — systemctl start postgresql works on images with systemd installed.

Was that not the case when you used container machines?

Apple says that `systemctl` is supported... hmm am I missing something?

"Real Linux services for testing. Run a database or whatever your stack needs as a system service — systemctl start postgresql works on images with systemd installed."

just adding a 'hell yeah: orbstack is so good' to the thread. i mainly avoid containers where i can, but when containers need to happen, orbstack is 'just enough' for me. lovely and well considered ui, stable, performant. don't need much else. thank you for your work and care!

> Our biggest perf/resource gain is dynamic memory, which reduces memory usage a lot by releasing unused memory back to macOS. Nothing else supports this, including Containerization.

Wow, missed this when reviewing OrbStack. I assumed that you just used Containerization and therefore would have the same limitation.

I know this is off topic, but I do thank you for your Android work, the idea and elegance of fastboot.js and that SafetyNet workaround trick was truly really cool.

I changed over to Orbstack just for local builds and it is one of those apps that makes owning a Mac that much better.

This post reminded me to buy a license, just done it, worth it for the time saved.

just dropping in to say orbstack super owns and i use it every day. huge respect to rethinking this experience, for a minute there i thought docker was just going to be the only path. i dont think ive looked back for docker since. orbstack just feels right, and damn its so fast and good with resources, and the UI is just insanely straight forward. props!

We love OrbStack too! Thank you for it,

I wanted to make its VM/machine our default secure agent sandbox, but I couldn’t figure out how to isolate this VM from the host properly. This thread prompted me to find the issue though, and I saw this was recently implemented! https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/169

I’ve been using podman on Mac. It’s been a nice fit as the container build files are identical to what I use on my fedora server. I have noticed my 2 virtual core 4 gb Linode vps runs apps faster in the same container as when run on my MacBook Air M2 16 gb. I expected some performance overhead but didn’t think it would be noticeable as it is. Overall happy with podman. How might OrbStack differ?

Those are awesome features! The one missing for me is bridge networking. Any idea why orbstack doesn’t have that?

https://github.com/orbstack/orbstack/issues/342

What kind of virtualization do you use internally? I assume some kind of LXD fork? OrbStack really feels like a single-node Incus host.

I love orbstack, is there any code I could read on the rust side? Seems very interesting

When are y’all gonna support sandboxing? Preferably Docker Sandboxes?

Orbstack plays well with Pycharms BTW.

Amazing software, thanks!

Tart was just bought by OpenAI so its future is suspect.

It's free for personal use, and for a company 96/year is absolutely nothing, I'd hope.

The alternatives are all broken in some ways is the answer, including the official paid docker enterprise.

Personally I’d rather the company provisioned me MacBook hardware with Linux. Unless Fable or some other ai ports asahi properly to modern hardware I expect to retire before this is possible, orbstack is the next best thing, available today.

OrbStack still uses a single big VM, Container Mashines each spawn its own MicroVM. Isolation level on Container Machines is better from that point of view.

Can you share more details? OrbStack has always supported inotify/fanotify (Linux fs watching APIs) on bind mounts and most people use watchers with no issues. Happy to look into whatever you're running into: danny@orbstack.dev

We dealt with this exact issue at my company. The root cause turned out to be something completely unrelated to what we initially suspected.

Orbstack is essentially a happy-path-only contraption that quickly breaks once you happen to take a less visited corner of the street. For example, if you happen to have multiple users who needs to work with it... good luck trying to clean up your system afterwards. So, it's a yoke as well. Maybe a better one for some people, but still a yoke.